Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) consists in the acquisition of a series of T1-weigthed MR images at different times after the injection of a contrast agent. Where present, the contrast increases the signal resulting in an enhancement of the corresponding image voxel. The analysis of the contrast uptake curves finds application to a wide spectrum of clinical problems: the characterization of tumor lesions, the assessment of cerebral and cardiac ischemia, as well as of synovitis in rheumatoid arthritis. The objective of the project is to study, develop and validate a prototype system for the analysis of DCE-MRI data in the context of rheumatoid arthritis. Our contribution to the project is focused on the implementation of novel methods for motion compensation to reduce the artefacts due to the patient’s movement during the acquisition. Motion compensation is an important part of the system since it allows for the accurate estimation of the enhancement curves for each pixel of the MR sequence.

This is a collaborative project with a small group of companies comprising Esaote SpA, CAMELOT Biomedical Systems Srl and Nextage Srl.